Long term evolution (“LTE”) of the Third Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”), also referred to as 3GPP LTE, refers to research and development involving the 3GPP LTE Release 8 and beyond as part of an ongoing effort across the industry aimed at identifying technologies and capabilities that can improve systems such as the universal mobile telecommunication system (“UMTS”). The notation “LTE-A” is generally used in the industry to refer to further advancements in LTE. The goals of this broadly based project include improving communication efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum opportunities, and achieving better integration with other open standards.
The evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (“E-UTRAN”) in 3GPP includes base stations providing user plane (including packet data convergence protocol/radio link control/media access control/physical (“PDCP/RLC/MAC/PHY”) sublayers) and control plane (including radio resource control (“RRC”) sublayer) protocol terminations towards wireless communication devices such as cellular telephones. A wireless communication device or terminal is generally known as user equipment (also referred to as “UE”). A base station is an entity of a communication system or network often referred to as a Node B or an NB. Particularly in the E-UTRAN, an “evolved” base station is referred to as an eNodeB or an eNB. For details about the overall architecture of the E-UTRAN, see 3GPP Technical Specification (“TS”) 36.300 v8.7.0 (2008-12), which is incorporated herein by reference. For details of the radio resource control management, see 3GPP TS 25.331 v.9.1.0 (2009-12) and 3GPP TS 36.331 v.9.1.0 (2009-12), which are incorporated herein by reference.
As wireless communication systems such as cellular telephone, satellite, and microwave communication systems become widely deployed and continue to attract a growing number of users, there is a pressing need to accommodate a large and variable number of communication devices that transmit an increasing quantity of data within a fixed spectral allocation and limited transmit power. The increased quantity of data is a consequence of wireless communication devices transmitting video information and surfing the Internet, as well as performing ordinary voice communication. The aforementioned services are provided while accommodating substantially simultaneous operation of a large number of wireless communication devices. Accordingly, there is a need to efficiently utilize the limited communication resources of a wireless communication system.
Thus, allocation of communication channel resources is a fundamental problem in communication systems. Many centralized communication systems attempt to provide fair communication channel allocation, for example, by using a centralized scheduler in third generation (“3G”) LTE systems. Many future communication systems are decentralized and, in such decentralized communication systems, the role of a centralized planner or scheduler is smaller. Even in centralized communication systems, the preferences of individual sources or services may only be known by the individual sources or services themselves, and are not revealed to a centralized planner or scheduler.
An important consideration for allocation of sub-channels in a communication system to various communication nodes that attempt to communicate concurrently through a network element such as an access point (or base station) is that each communication node obtains a fair proportion of spectrum or time (or both). The process for allocation of sub-channels or other communication resources should remain simple and efficient and, ideally, there should not be a need to signal individual communication node preferences to an external source such as a centralized planner or scheduler. Thus, an unresolved issue in communication systems and other information networks is how to efficiently manage allocation of sub-channels therein taking into account the needs and preferences of communication nodes such as user equipment in the communication systems.